Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Yes, I Can!

A couple of months ago, I agreed to make a nursery wall-hanging for my cousin's great good friend, whose first baby is due later this month. My cousin didn't want anything that screamed "BABY GIRL!" Instead, she envisioned elephants or giraffes, but nothing too cutesy.

I said, "Of course. No problem." I always say that, right before wondering what exactly I was thinking. In this case, I had never done a quilt with animals on it. I made fish once, but that's it. I remembered that only after loving the concept.

Then came the combined thinking and panic phase. How to arrange these animals? Would they be playing with each other? Would they be young animals? How would the viewer know that these were young ones? Just because the average first-grader can draw an elephant doesn't mean I can make one out of fabric. Where would the baby's name go? Trees? Flowers?

This went on for a few weeks while I finished some other orders, but once those were done, I was out of excuses. Nothing to do but do it.

I turned on some music (thank you, Sergio Mendes!) and started auditioning fabrics, making quick judgments about what would work together and what would not. This is what I ended up with:

Fabric auditions

Can you see the elephants and the giraffes? Not yet? Ok.

Some people sketch first, but I usually don't. Working quickly, I started cutting and soon had this:

Initial layout

Which, when finished was this:

Playdate, 2013, by Jacqueline Bryant Campbell

There is always something in each quilt that is my favorite part but in this one, the baby giraffe was tied with the little birds on the mother elephant. All done!

I just linked up with Nina-Marie at Off the Wall Fridays! Please stop by and be inspired by some wonderful artists.